Backed by VCs, Startups go all out to bridge digital divide among smartphone users

Startups are receiving VC funding to design localised tech, while e-comm sites are translating their platforms to make them accessible to users in Tier-2 or 3 cities.Evelyn Fok | ET Bureau | April 21, 2015, 09:48 IST

Startups are receiving VC funding to design localised tech, while e-comm sites are translating their platforms to make them accessible to users in Tier-2 or 3 cities.As smartphone penetration deepens its reach in India, players in the mobile ecosystem are rushing to solve the core problem of language comprehension that is preventing the flood of users from making full use of mobile technologies, which have been largely English-oriented so far.

Startups such as NewsHunt, Reverie and LinguaNext are receiving venture funding to design localised technologies, while e-commerce sites are translating their platforms to make them accessible to users in Tier-2 or 3 cities.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which sold over one million devices within months of launching in India, is poised to offer its phones in six languages soon, following in the footsteps of local maker Micromax.

“There is a digital gap in India – millions of people who do not understand proper English are switching to smartphones, where most phone features are in English,” said Rakesh Deshmukh, co-founder and CEO of smartphone company Firstouch, which has built a regional operating system in ten vernacular languages.

After conducting a successful pilot in Gujarat, the six-year-old company is now licensing its technology for smartphone makers to run its operating system, which allows users to translate or transliterate content by simply swiping the screen. Deshmukh said that the first Firstouch-enabled phones will go on sale in a matter of weeks.

Meanwhile, Sequoia-backed Newshunt has made the most significant effort in providing vernacular content online by offering news in 12 languages from over 100 publications. Every month, the eight-year-old platform sees over 2 billion page views by 19 million monthly unique users and sells over 500,000 books in vernacular languages.

“Every Indian will do some commerce on mobile, and a majority of them use local languages. There is a possibility of reducing barriers for these users doing transactions,” said Virendra Gupta, founder and CEO of Newshunt, adding that test preparation materials, books, blogs, and government and utility services need to be digitised in local languages. All major e-commerce sites in the country have already launched or are working on launching their sites in multiple Indian languages.

According to the India Human Development Survey in 2005, only 5% of Indians – some 60 million people – are fluent in English, while 72% do not speak the language.

An Ericsson report published last year estimated smartphone ownership in India to surpass 520 million by 2020. Simply solving the challenge of creating and consuming vernacular content on smartphones is not enough though. “It’s not simply translation of languages, it’s localisation – understanding the customers’ preferences from a very local perspective in terms of type of content delivered, the medium it is delivered on, and the language in which it is delivered,” said Karthik Reddy, managing partner of early-stage venture capital firm Blume Ventures.

This gargantuan task cannot be shouldered on by any single player. Which is why Google recently set up the Indian Language Internet Alliance, which “aims to bring under one roof those committed to building the Indic internet across technology, content, and policy areas,” said a Google spokesperson.